Will the movie Mohenjo Daro open the floodgates of popular interest in the ancient Indus civilization? What do you think?
Twenty-one years into running Harappa.com, the release of Mohenjo Daro is a landmark for interest in the subject (traffic in the last few days has doubled to five thousand people a day).

Mohenjo-daro has been called the "city of wells." Mark Kenoyer writes: "On the basis of the number of wells found in the excavated areas, Michael Jansen has calculated that the city may have had over 700 wells.

An interesting story in light of all the speculation about water issues at the same time, roughly 1900 BCE, in the ancient Indus valley. There was possibly a trading relationship with ancient China. Water, too little or too much, must have been a factor in the rise and fall of Bronze Age civilizations.

Discarded ancient Indus sherds, after archaeologists have sifted through them and cleaned them. This pottery debris from excavations at Harappa covers hundreds - if not a thousand – years of habitation, far longer a period than say modern times.

In connection with the recent post about Indus discoveries in Oman, we note that the archaeologist who discovered the first definitive evidence of Bronze Age trade between Balochistan and the Gulf, Beatrice de Cardi, just died at the age of 102.
She worked with Sir Mortimer Wheeler who lent her "his foreman, Sadar Din, a minor official of the Pakistani Archaeological Department who, despite being illiterate, had an extraordinarily retentive memory for archaeological sites and taught her what to look for. Together they located some 47 archaeological sites . . .."

One of the least explored avenues in ancient Indus research, one which would so clearly reinforce the available evidence for the long, deep local roots of Indus civilization stretching back deep into the Stone Age (25,000-30,000 years back).

"Late III Phase. Average level: – 9.9 ft. – A few walls only remained of House I, and it will be noticed that Fore Lane had been closed in by continuing the east wall of House I right across it to the northern wall of Block I on the opposite side.

1. A conjectural view of Indus settlement at Surkotada. Painting by Lalit Jain, Archaeological Survey of India. 2. One of the most detailed reconstructions of an ancient Indus gateway, this one on Mound E at Harappa.